Thursday, May 12, 2011

There are things about this series that are really starting to annoy me, like the Canada vs America culture comments, which I find kind of insulting. I actually live in the city the series takes place in, and while the details are accurate - there really is a Lens Crafters at Fairview Mall, RIM and the Perimeter Institute exist as described - I don't feel like the people are at all realistic. I've read a few Sawyer novels, and I think it's fair to say his books are more about ideas than people. His characters are predictable stereotypes with no depth or complexity, and they do only what is necessary for the plot, not what would make sense for them. It's one thing to have a genius 16 year old blind girl, but everyone in this book knows things they shouldn't know. A sixteen year old boy who knows about Canadian language law? That's just one example of things that are totally unbelievable about this book. It's almost cartoonish. The ideas that are presented are extremely interesting, and that's where Sawyer succeeds. I just wish those ideas didn't have to be surrounded by so much contrived cheese. I'll still read the third book in the series, hopefully it will be an improvement.